In a variety of medical procedures, a tubular body of a catheter, sheath or lead (e.g., pacing lead) travels through a patient body lumen in route to a treatment site within the patient. A tubular body of a catheter or sheath will often include deflection wires that run the length of the tubular body through a central lumen of the tubular body. These deflection wires are used to deflect the distal end of the tubular body to facilitate the tubular body's negotiation of the patient body lumen or to facilitate the positioning of the tubular body's distal end adjacent to a treatment site.
Once positioned at the treatment site, the tubular body will be used to deliver a medical device (e.g., a pacemaker lead, a catheter, a stent, etc.) or a pharmaceutical to the treatment site, and/or the tubular body will be used to perform diagnostic and/or treatment procedures (e.g., RF ablation, deployment of a balloon to expand an occlusion, etc.) To enable the performance of diagnostic and/or RF ablation procedures, conductor wires are routed through the central lumen of the tubular body of a catheter, sheath or lead. To enable the delivery of a pharmaceutical, fluid conveying lumens are routed through the central lumen of the tubular body. To enable the delivery of a medical device, a medical device deploying lumen is routed through the central lumen of the tubular body.
Where a tubular body of a catheter, sheath or lead is adapted to perform one or more of the aforementioned procedures, the central lumen of such a tubular body becomes crowded with wires and/or lumens. The crowding makes it difficult to manufacture the tubular body because each wire and/or lumen must be threaded past the other wires and/or lumens previously installed in the tubular body's central lumen during the manufacturing process. The crowding can result in bent or kinked wires and lumens. The crowding makes the manufacture of the tubular bodies unnecessarily complicated and expensive.
The crowding within the central lumen increases the frictional resistance that must be overcome when displacing the deflection wires to cause the distal end of the tubular body to deflect. The crowding also increases the difficulty associated with passing a medical device through the tubular body to a treatment site. The crowding increases the difficulty associated with using the tubular body.
There is a need in the art for a tubular body that reduces the problems presented by the central lumen crowding associated with prior art tubular bodies. There is also a need in the art for a method of manufacturing a tubular body that is less complicated and, as a result, less expensive as compared to the methods used for prior art tubular bodies.